Vaughn Johnson

STAFF WRITER

Given all of the last-minute shuffling that has taken place behind the scenes in WWE the last couple of days, it was almost fitting that the 2017 edition of Tables, Ladders and Chairs felt chaotic at times.

In the midst of all of that chaos was actually a rather fun pay-per-view from WWE, which featured a crazy main event, a borderline classic wrestling match and a pair of very good women’s bouts.

Before I dig into my full analysis, here are the full match results from the Target Center in Minneapolis:

Most of the chaos that occurred during this show took place during the main event, which went from a much-ballyhooed Shield reunion to the even more ballyhooed in-ring return of Angle, who joined Ambrose and Rollins in place of Roman Reigns, who has apparently fallen victim to the viral infection that has plagued the WWE locker room recently.

Instead of wearing his traditional singlet, Angle became an honorary member of The Shield, as he donned the trio’s tactical gear and even walked through the crowd for their entrance.

Angle mixed it up with his opponents right off the bat, but you could tell there was a bit of ring rust in the beginning, which was to be expected. After all, Angle has not wrestled a match in about a year and learned he was taking part in this match only a few days ago.

With that said, he did get to perform a trio of German suplexes on The Miz before Strowman got a hold of him and power slammed him through a table.

Medical personnel ran to ringside to check on Angle and helped him out of the arena, which left Rollins and Ambrose to fend for themselves against five men.

This is where things got a little strange.

For whatever reason, Kane turned on Strowman. Unless I missed something, this was just a random on Kane’s part. To the surprise of no one, Strowman didn’t take kindly to Kane’s transgression and attempted to decimate him.

However, Kane managed to get the better of him and choke slammed him through what I believe was supposed to be the stage, but it clearly wasn’t.

Regardless, Kane followed that up by dropping an avalanche of chairs that were hanging from the ceiling onto Strowman, which seemingly put him out of commission.

But this is Strowman we’re talking about and the big man somehow made his way back to his feet and began beating up not only Kane but the other members of his team when they tried to stop him from tearing Kane a part.

Then Strowman’s entire team began beating him up and tossed him into the back of a garbage truck. Oh, I forgot to mention that The Miz apparently hired someone to back a garbage truck into the arena. The driver was even wearing a Miz shirt.

Once in the truck, The Miz instructed the drive to squash Strowman like he was a pile of trash … and he did, which meant that Strowman should have died, right?

But like us wrestling fans are known to do, we had to find something wrong with Asuka’s successful debut.

In this case, it was the fact that Emma got in a lot of offense on Asuka. For whatever reason, fans were expecting Asuka to defeat Emma in mere seconds.

I never expected Emma to come out on top, but I certainly didn’t think she was going to lose in a minute or two.

It was almost like people forgot that Asuka had competitive matches in NXT all the time, especially at the Takeover specials.

In theory, Raw and Smackdown Live are a step up in competition from NXT, which means that it should be a little harder for Asuka to win.

It’s not like WWE hurt Asuka’s credibility by having her have a competitive match. Michael Cole spent Asuka’s entire entrance running down her list of accomplishments. Among them is the fact that she has not lost during her two-year tenure in WWE/NXT.

By the way, she held the NXT Women’s title for more than 500 days. If people unfamiliar with her don’t understand that she is a force to be reckoned with after learning all of that then they are beyond saving at this point.

And finally, how much could Asuka’s credibility suffer if all she does nothing by win, win, win, no matter what? She barely squeaked by Ember Moon on multiple occasions in NXT and I don’t think she lost anything as a result.

She even cheated to win one of those matches with Moon.

James fell short vs. Bliss

I didn’t go into TLC with super high expectations for James versus Bliss, but it turned out be a very good match that I believed helped both women.

Bliss was obviously helped by defeating a legend such as James, but I believe James’ increased her stock by putting forth such a valiant effort, which she got across in her post-match promo.